Friday, 1 June 2012

Lost Valley Ranch – Spring visit 2012
The lobby was being renovated as I was there and is now modern and beautiful. I was privileged to meet a couple of young ladies who perform in Anchorage, in a trick riding team. They were not allowed to show us their moves (parental control!) but showed us photographs - what talent and bravery.

Casper was great especially leading rides as we showed new wranglers some of the routes. I led a very interesting ride to Salt Lick 7 - unfortunately I didn't really remember the proper way back from Stag Rock, in fact I'm not even sure we ever were at Stag but after bushwacking up and down very steep draws we got home with a sigh of relief.
The weather was exceptionally warm and in the high 60's.
I was very privileged to ride Rosie the daughter of Smokey now aged 4, whom I was allowed to name when she was born. Chelsea has been her wrangler since the beginning and is very fond of her. She is going to be a little bit chunkier than the average Quarter horse due to her ancestry and not a fast girl but she was very well behaved for a youngster and did everything asked of her.

You can't catch us!

On Monday I was lucky to go to Kansas. Well, I thought I was lucky. Two of the guys were fetching horses from winter pasture and to try and ensure my favourite Iron Man came back I went along for the ride. It was a long 4 and a half hour journey there but the flatness of Kansas was relieved by little farmsteads and interesting hills. The horses were supposed to have been lured into a holding pen but when we got there not a sight of them was to be seen. We found a small bunch and Charlie managed to get hold of Oliver and tack him up but when they got bored with the feed we had with us they decided to have a new game of letting us chase them over the 9000 acres available to them. Well, we didn't actually traverse 9000 acres as there were a few wire fences but as they galloped off into the horizon it looked a hopeless task. After Oliver was worn out, Charlie continued on foot while Jeff and I followed in the truck trying to help without wrecking the vehicle. I say I helped - I just sat there and gave encouragement! After a few abortive attempts with Charlie heroically running to and fro they appeared to give up and went into the pen where we caught and haltered them and loaded up into two trailers- 15 in one and 10 in the other and drove back to the ranch. We stopped at Wendy's (other hamburger joints are available!) and a man who had looked at our horses tried to keep us there - he obviously wanted to talk about horses but we had a long journey ahead of us and couldn't be as chatty as we would have liked. We had a safe journey home and who knows if the horses were sad or glad to be back at the ranch with work instead of play to look forward to for the next few months.

On Thursday an early foal arrived, born to a rather grumpy mare with the name of J-Boy. There was a bit of a crisis due to a retained placenta and although I won’t go into the gory details it was good that Tony had been on a special foaling course! Later on I got to hold the foal to have it’s first injections and Adrienne got to sterilise it’s navel.